Odoriferous Friend Identification Game

I thought this would be a good category to place this fresh idea in.
Others have most likely already tried this, it might already be somewhere in the rewild forums, but I will go ahead and post it anyway.

ODORIFEROUS FRIEND IDENTIFICATION GAME

This game will work best within a group of 5-15 friends, the more the merrier and challenging! I would recommend to try this while hiking, camping, or just hanging out with a group of friends, include people you have known for a long time, friends you met recently, family members, new friends in your life, etc. etc.

  1. Blindfold the first feral contestant.
  2. To clear up the sinuses, give the first contestant something spicy. Smelling eucalyptus or other fresh leaves can also work. This is to prepare the nose to recognize different odors.
  3. Have the contestant sit cross-legged on the ground. Bring the feral friends one-by-one to be smelled. The feral contestant could smell around the friend’s neck, hair, chest, etc. It is up to the contestant to identify the friend by his or her particular scent.
  4. Switch to the next contestant after going thru all of the feral friends.
  5. This is a great activity to practice with friends and family but don’t stop there, also try plants, animal companions, fruits, herb types (indicas/sativas), and anything else you can think of!
  6. Don’t stop there! With the blindfold still on, allow the contestant to use his or her hands to touch, feel, caress, and learn everyones face or hand structures.

I feel this is a great activity to bond by breaking down physical and mental barriers. Our noses need to rewild too…Have fun fellow feral friends!

PS. You can even try to enhance your vocabulary by describing the unique scents that you experience. Here are a few examples taken from an online thesaurus.

aromatic, balmy, dank, effluvious, fetid, flavorsome, flowery, foul, fragrant, heady, honeyed, loud, malodorous, mephitic, miasmic, moldy, musty, nauseous, odoriferous, offensive, olfactive, olfactory, perfumatory, perfumed, perfumy, pewy, pungent, putrid, redolent, reeking, rotten, savorous, savory, scent-laden, scented, scentful, skunky*, smelly, spicy, stagnant, stale, stinking, stinko, stinky, strong, sweet, sweet-scented, sweet-smelling, unsavory, whiffy!

Mmm. Haven’t done a blindfold game in a while! Thanks for reminding me. I’ll try this one with my girlfriend… in bed! :wink: No seriously. Thanks for reminding me about these!

Is it “true” that women have a better sense of smell than men? I saw an experiment once (on tv? don’t know where…) where both men and women were blindfolded, and each couples’ baby was held to each person to smell. All of the women picked out their baby’s smell amongst all the other babies, but none of the men recognized their baby’s smell…

I donno who has better nose powers, male or female, but once I got my two work hats mixed up at work in the other crews hat pile and had to sniff my hats out. Some of my coworkers have strong head smells because of various reason (smoking, perfume, shampoo, makeup, etc) which made it easy for me to distinguish and remember their smell right of the bat, but others had hardly no smell at all like me, which made it a lil more difficult of search, and others had shared similar smells because they lived together or hung out together a lot off the job. Overall, I find that the more one shamanizes with nose powers the better ones nose powers enhance. This game sounds like fun.

Hmm, I can’t help but wonder if a lot of factors outside of pure, simple, olfactory memory could have influenced the outcome of that experiment.

I’d like to see an experiment done with more neutral objects (er, not to call a baby an “object”). Or mutual friends. (Then again, people don’t usually go around smelling their friends – unless they’re playing the OFI Game!)

How could anyone not remember the smell of their own child!? WTF!!! Don’t answer that. ;D

er, maybe the kid’s smell got buried under some other weird product stinks that some marketeer judged to smell preferable. . .

this game sounds GREAT!

I noticed once, hiking a busy trail in Forest Park, that sometimes a very loud-smelling cloud of laundry-product scents would precede and trail after folks walking by–ick! I buy most of my clothes secondhand, and sometimes realize too late that they have “perfume damage” that never comes out.

Neighbor, I like your story of the hats at work. :slight_smile:

all babies have wonderful “bayhead smell”…totally intoxicating… maybe it keeps us from murdering nonrelated young.

Thanks to everyone who replied to this post.
The baby and hat stories are both great! Babyhead scents are indeed completely intoxicating. I could not get enough whiffs of my aunts baby this summer in mexico city. It’s disturbing that our beautiful offspring grow up in such deplorable environmental conditions, especially in Mexico City, the air they breathe is filthy!
I think it’s great to have scented plants in your home around your baby all the time. Maybe rubbing some sages or lavenders on his/her clothing to familiarize the child with fragrances. Come to think of it, this will be a great way to bond with my auntie. Next time in Mexico City, we shall acquire potted plants (her home has absolutely no soil areas) and fill her home with fragrant native plants for the babys comfort.

Oh yeah, and I also remember hiking as yarrow dreamer describes, and passing by someone who wreaked of cologne. Cologne=Colonized? Maybe, but it definitely made me gag!

I never understood why some people wear cologne, or dress up, or wear makeup when hiking?!?!?

In nature observation, sneaking, tracking, and keeping a low profile I understand scentless presence and camoing body odor, but otherwise IDK unless the smell puts me off or makes me uncontrollablely horny which rarely happens.